Putting MagSwitches to Use

[eajhnsn1]

This worked well so I thought I would share.

My Woodcraft Pen Blank Centering Drilling Vise arrived a week or so ago, so I spent some time figuring out how to best use it.
I mounted it on a piece of 3/4" plywood, cut to size for my drill press' iron table, and drilled holes for a pair of MagSwitch MagJig 150s for holding it down without clamps.

Now I can quickly and easily get the whole thing centered, turn the switches to lock it down, and get good repeatable results.

 

[Roger williams]

like it good idea, might hijack it

 

[MDWine]

Excellent... gotta give that some consideration!

 

[Fine Engineer]

Getting good repeatable centers has been an elusive task for me as well. I have this same vice, and clamped it to my drill press table, but it would still drill off-center. I think one of the problems is the difficulty in holding the vice in the right place while trying to tighten both clamps. With this setup, I can use a ~10mm shaft in the chuck and clamped in the vice, then just turn the knobs on the magnets to secure. Thanks for sharing!

 

[penicillin]

I drill on the lathe, but will put in my recommendation for MagJig magnets, which come in different sizes/strengths.

I have the MagJig 150s as well. They are not cheap, but for the money you get a highly versatile tool. I recommend the starter kit. The featherboard in the starter kit is so much easier to position than the tighten-in-the-miter-slot featherboards I have, and much easier than the homemade ones that clamp to the saw. Here is a link to see what I am talking about:
https://magswitch.com/product/woodworking-starter-kit/

I looked, and the price has gone up a lot. A lot a lot. Search carefully, and you may find a seller who didn't get the memo and is still selling them in the $80 range, rather than the current $120. Ouch. If you find them for less, make sure they can make good on the price.

Be sure you own or buy a compatible Forstner bit to go with the magnets, and you will think of all kinds of new and creative idea to put those magnets to good use.

 

[eajhnsn1]

I looked, and the price has gone up a lot. A lot a lot. Search carefully, and you may find a seller who didn't get the memo and is still selling them in the $80 range, rather than the current $120. Ouch. If you find them for less, make sure they can make good on the price.

It looks like Amazon (Magswitch store) still has them for "only" $95. Two years ago when I bought my pair, they were $79.

Be sure you own or buy a compatible Forstner bit to go with the magnets, and you will think of all kinds of new and creative idea to put those magnets to good use.

I'll also say another nice them about them is that you can just move them between jigs; you do not necessarily have to keep buying new ones when you come up with new uses.

 

[penicillin]

That's funny, when I look at Amazon by going directly to their website and searching there, it is $109.14.

You can get wildly different prices for the same listing from Amazon, and one thing that affects the price is how you got to the item on Amazon's website.

Example:
My spouse wanted to order an item from Amazon. She found it on her iPad. It cost $29. We do purchases together from my computer, so we went to my office to buy it with her. We could not find the Amazon listing with the price she found. We could see it in plain sight on her iPad screen. It wasn't until we went through each step carefully together that we found the answer.

Clicking the link from a Google search got the $29 price. It had to be Google and it had to be from a web search. My default search engine is DuckDuckGo, not Google. If we used DuckDuckGo to search, or went directly to Amazon's website (via "www . amazon . com", or "smile . amazon . com") we found prices starting at $35 and up - for the EXACT SAME LISTING. That's one example for a non-penturning item that we bought for her.